Many projects have been created on top of Ethereum. Fans of the project will talk up the fruits of that blockchain if you let them, but having seen the project’s growth firsthand since its inception in Toronto in 2014, I can’t see anything that’s aged well or had a more profound impact on the world than Tornado Cash.
While stablecoins and decentralized exchanges have passed through Ethereum and migrated to chains like Solana and Tron, and the store of value use case has been firmly cornered by bitcoin. Tornado Cash remains a stand-alone wonder of the (otherwise arguably overhyped) smart contracting platform.
Unlike many of the projects imagined in the early days of Ethereum — smart home lock systems, self-driving cars that pay their own bills via ETH and governed via a smart contract — Tornado Cash has actually been implemented and found product-market fit. It serves as a practically immutable monetary VPN, a tool…
